


White Noise

by PhilipJFright



Category: LISA (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Hospitalization, Hospitals, M/M, Medical Trauma, but still figured a warning was worthwhile, only real visceral thing is like..., sometimes you write a fic that only appeals to you and one friend and thats okay, tread lightly if you have hospital/medical triggers, vaguely describing a chest tube being pulled out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-25 23:04:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21364138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhilipJFright/pseuds/PhilipJFright
Summary: Terry's never been a good sleeper. It's less frustrating when there's someone to stay up with.
Relationships: Brad Armstrong/Terry Hintz
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	White Noise

Terry finds himself awake again.

He’s never been a great sleeper, he’s never really been allowed to be. From pretty early on, his sleep was routinely interrupted by nurses, too exhausted themselves to be truly apologetic, checking in to replace an oxygen tank, to flush an IV, to reapply an electrode that fell off during the hour or so he’d managed to shut his eyes for since the last check in. Even when he wasn’t on oxygen, when his IVs were fresh and the electrodes for his EKG were firmly stuck to his chest, he had trouble sleeping.

Hospitals were loud. There was always someone hacking their lungs out nearby, someone with a faulty heart monitor, a child yelling because they didn’t want another needle. Sometimes it was his pneumonia or his heart monitor or his yelling, but even when it wasn’t, it didn’t make for a great sleeping environment.

And even outside the hospital, back in his apartment as an adult, in his bedroom as a kid,… well, then it was too _quiet._ He’d miss the shuffle of gurneys down the hallway, and crappy late-night television playing softly in the room next door.

Before the Flash, he could fix the television part, usually. As an adult, it was easy— put something on your phone, some show or video with people talking, and force yourself to close your eyes. As a child, it was nearly the same, but without the phone. Go downstairs, curl up on the couch, watch some informercial with the volume on low until he drifted off. 

He learned that his parents didn’t particularly like finding him sprawled out in the living room with the morning news quietly droning away, but there was a lot that Terry did that his parents didn’t particularly like.

There aren’t any parents to chastise him anymore, but there isn’t any tv either. His phone stopped working years ago.

He tries shifting in the dirt, looking up at the stars. They’re brighter in the sky than they used to be, as a kid, and he’s reminded of late-night trips home from the hospital. He’d tiredly gaze out the window, watching as the stars twinkled into view, brighter the further they got from the city hospital and all the light pollution that surrounded it. Sometimes, once they got back home, he’d stand in the driveway for a minute or so, just gazing up. He was always so drained— healthy enough to be let out of the hospital, but not all better, something others struggled to understand— and staying out in the cool night and gazing up at the stars would make things feel a little clearer. He never stayed out for long, not wanting to hear his mother kvetch about keeping the door open, but just long enough. 

His chest is tight. It’s not new. He supposes he’s not really built for camping— not built for breathing in dirt and smoke. He knows the others need a campfire, he knows it’s probably safer for _him_ in the long run to be by a campfire, (his circulation has never been great, three heart surgeries didn’t improve that. He remembers his doctor telling him, as a teenager, that he’d need a fourth, in middle age, and he tries not to think about when he would have had it, had things been normal.) but he still feels an anvil on his chest when he tries to inhale.

He coughs, and it’s an awful thing, phlegmy and loud and wet, a cough that should belong to a serial chainsmoker, that used to draw stares when he was four. 

Someone shifts nearby, and he tenses. God, he hopes it’s not a gang— he knows for a fact that they don’t have enough mags for a ransom, they’re still recovering from the last kidnapping, and hell if he’ll be able to put up enough of a fight to stop anyone who tries to take him away. He still can’t believe Brad came to rescue him the first time. Or that he gave up all his belongings for him. Or his arm. Or—

Terry stops himself there, remembering what his counselor said, in sixth grade, as he gnawed his nails off in her office during his lunch period. You don’t have to be grateful that people are keeping you alive. You don’t have to ask yourself if you’ve earned it. It’s not your fault that it takes more to keep you alive, you didn’t do anything to cause that, and you don’t have to feel guilty for people caring for you like they should. Don’t let anyone hold that against you.

He remembers the little plushes she would give to students who came to see her, cheap little beanie babies that became worthless once the collecting craze died down. He thinks he might still have one, tucked away somewhere in his little village. He wonders if she would have given up her arm for him, and he doubts it. She was a good school counsellor, but she always asked him to skip his lunch period to meet with her, not the other way around.

The person in the dark shifts again, and Terry remembers where he is. Slowly, he sits up, and his muscles ache, but when don’t they?

He can see Olan and Nern, barely illuminated by the dying embers of the campfire. Nern is snoring slightly, drooling, muttering something in his sleep, and Olan’s head is propped against a stone, hat covering even more of his face than usual.

Brad he doesn’t see, and he hates how quickly that makes him panic. 

He stands up, a little too fast, and he nearly stumbles when his muscles protest— but they always do, and he’s learned to keep his balance and ignore.

He finds his footing and lets his eyes adjust to the darkness, scanning the area for Brad, hoping that the shuffling in the blackness was just him and— oh, thank god.

Brad’s fine, at least he seems to be, sitting by a nearby cliffside, a small ways away from the camp, and Terry sighs at himself for being so paranoid, for expecting Brad to just be gone. 

He’s already up, so he makes his way over to him, quiet, but not so quiet that Brad won’t be able to hear him coming.

Terry sits down next to him, curling his crackling knees to his chest and resting his chin on his arms. He glances over at Brad, notices his breathing is a little heavier than normal, and he feels like he should ask why he’s up, but a louder, more insistent part tells him he shouldn’t. 

Brad doesn’t ask either, doesn't say a word. He glances at Terry, gives a curt, but not unfriendly nod, and goes back to gazing off the cliffside.

It’s not an uncomfortable silence, but Terry still wonders if he should break it. Admit what woke him— a mixture of a half-memory, half-dream of a chest tube being yanked out, and a very real chest ache— but then he sees Brad’s stump, wrapped tightly in dirty bandages that Terry knows would have been changed a dozen times by now by a nurse, and he feels embarrassed. Complain to the man who got his arm lopped off for you because you woke up scared over a plastic tube, one ripped out when you were on morphine, one that was wiped down and stitched up before the spot could even really start to bleed.

What the hell does he have to complain about, really?

He scratches his zipper without thinking.

He wants to lean on Brad’s shoulder, or let Brad lean on his, or take his hand, but, even though they’ve done it before, he’s not sure it would be welcomed. Brad’s not always comfortable with unexpected touch, he learned that quickly, and he gets that. The first time Olan drunkenly, well-meaning but forcefully pat Terry’s back around the campfire, his mind had went went to doctors beating his back raw to dislodge phlegm, and he’d tensed up. Olan hadn’t noticed, too focused on his potato liquor, but Brad had, and he’d gently removed the man’s hand, and when Nern, half plastered, half asleep, somehow still mumbling, had slumped over onto Brad’s thigh and stayed there, and Brad’s eyes had become unfocused, Terry had moved the man against his own knee instead. Neither one asked the other about it, they never really did, but Terry, at least, felt like there was some sort of understanding between them, though it was hard to tell with Brad sometimes.

So they sit in silence, close but not touching, until Terry lets out another cough. He muffles it best he can, but a loud sound, almost a bark, erupts from him, and he winces when he notices Brad start.

“Sorry,” he says as he coughs up his lung, and Brad waits for him to finish his fit. He knows better than to pat Terry’s back, even though that’s his instinct, so instead he just sits a little closer, close enough that their shoulders occasionally brush up against each other as Terry rocks back and forth.

“It’s fine.” His voice is hoarse, and Terry is grateful when Brad doesn’t tell him not to apologize— Olan does that, frequently, and it always just makes him want to apologize more. “… We should find an inn tomorrow.”

They don’t have the mags for that and they both know it, and Terry isn’t sure how much better that would be, anyway. Nowhere is clean anymore, even inns. Still, he nods. “That’d be nice. Have, like, an actual pillow. Prop my head up.”

“… Does that help?” 

“Kinda? I dunno, a doctor said that it, like, makes sure my airway's clear or something? I know Lincoln did it.”

“… The president?”

“Yeah. My school visited his house once as a field trip thing, and he had this special pillow that propped his head up ‘cause of breathing junk.”

“Marfan syndrome.” Brad says, and they both seem surprised by it. “… I think I did a report on him in middle school.”

“Me too, I think everyone did. My uncle was a teacher, I think he said learning about Lincoln was like, a state requirement when we were kids? So lots of people did papers and shit on him. Most kids don’t know about the Marfan syndrome, though.”

“I wanted to know why he was so tall,” Brad shrugs, and Terry snorts.

“Yeah. I went kinda ham on the health stuff, I think.” He lies down, staring up at the sky. “He didn’t have actually Marfan though. Like, probably didn’t, they never really tested him for it, but apparently the only reason people thought he had it was because one dude in the sixties said he did, so it’s almost like, a medical urban legend type deal. But he never had heart problems or a lot of the other shit that comes with it, so…” he trails off, then adds, almost as an afterthought, “… I don’t have it either.”

“… Oh.” He can tell Brad’s not sure what to say, and he knows maybe he should stop talking, but he doesn’t.

“My parents tested me for it, but I guess I’m just, like, tall and bony, and the heart and lung and scoliosis stuff was all separate? Which they kinda should have known, they already had a bunch diagnoses, I guess they just got paranoid before Jeff was born.” He’s still staring at the sky. “Don’t have DiGeorge, either, know they tested me for that. Nothing’s fucky with my genes. Just bad luck, I guess.”

“… Jeff?” 

Brad immediately looks uncomfortable after asking, but Terry can’t hold the question against him. He hadn’t even realized he’d mentioned him, it had just slipped out.

“… Little brother. My parents had a bunch of genetic testing done on me and, like, themselves, when they were deciding…” he chews on his cheek, chooses his words. “… When they were thinking about having him. Nothing was wrong with any of us, at least, like… not junk that woulda been passed on.” He doesn’t mention the second brother after that, he doesn’t feel the need to share more about his family, doesn’t want to, and he knows Brad wouldn’t expect that of him.

“Oh.”

“… Yeah.”

They let the silence sit for a while, longer than Terry intends, and he wonders if he should leave, if he’s made things worse. Brad looks like he might want to ask something, but also looks like that’s the last thing he wants to do, and Terry’s not sure if he should meet him halfway and keep the conversation going or let it die, so he lies in the dirt and struggles to remember the names of all the constellations and tries not to cough again.

“… Is lupus genetic?” He’s surprised when Brad breaks the silence, even more surprised by the question. Even _Brad_ looks a little surprised, like that wasn’t what he was originally going to ask.

“… Dunno. Nobody ever thought I had it, never learned much about it. I think so, though, or it has to do with genes, at least.” He sits up, accidentally brushes against Brad. “… Why?”

“You got me thinking about Cheeks, I guess.” Brad scratches his beard. “Think he’s the only person I knew before you who was sick. Never really asked him about it.”

It takes Terry a minute to connect the name to the man he saw dying beside Brad’s door.

“Guess we shouldn’t’ve called him that, but we were asshole kids, and then it just stuck, and he never seemed too pissed at it… I guess he had… he said it wasn’t a bad case, he just stayed out of the sun and took… predni… pred-something, and painkillers. He always let us bum those. Maybe he did other shit we didn't know about. He didn't talk about it a lot.”

“Prednisone. I took that too, used to help my lungs.” He doesn’t comment on Brad and the guys using Cheeks’ painkillers, it doesn’t bother him much, although he remembers how easily hydrocodone knocked him out whenever he took it and worries a little, then scoffs at himself for worrying, because obviously Brad never overdosed too badly if he’s here to be talking about it. Probably.

“… Shit.”  


“… What?”

“We had some of that stashed back at the house.”

“Painkillers?”  


“No, the— the lung thing.” Brad doesn’t even try to pronounce prednisone this time. “… Shoulda taken it.”

“Dude, that stuff’s gotta be completely expired by now. I appreciate it, but it probably wouldn’t’ve done anything. Haven’t found any good meds in a while.”

“Really?”

“Thought I found an inhaler like a month before I met you, it expired in three months or something, I was so _psyched_, then, nope, Albuterol. Like, shit, really can’t catch a break.”

“What, not your prescription?” His tone of voice is almost teasing, and Terry’s glad to hear the hoarseness has mostly left it.

“Not if I wanna keep my heart beating!” Terry laughs, but regrets saying that when the hint of a smile disappears from Brad’s face. “Nah, don’t worry, I didn’t risk it, it just… kind of sucked. Albuterol does this thing where it gives people palpitations or something, so it’s not something I can take. Which I guess would have actually made my heart beat more, not stop but… There’s a lotta crap like that when you have a bunch of different issues. It’s chill though, I know what not to mix.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Never try a new inhaler and a new dose of Ritalin at the same time.”

Brad snorts again, and Terry’s grateful. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Seriously, no idea what my pulmonologist was thinking, I was bouncing off the walls.”

“… You’re always bouncing off the walls, Terr,” Brad says, and he sounds less tired than he has in a while.

“Yeah, okay, but imagine me bouncing off the walls like, five times worse.”

“I don’t think I want to,” Brad laughs, and Terry grins, feels a rush of warmth throughout his body, and realizes how tired he is. His chest is aching less now, and the memory that woke him seems fainter and fainter.

Talking to Brad is a lot better than watching an infomercial, although he wouldn’t be opposed to cuddling up on a couch again.

He decides to test the waters, pressing a little closer to Brad, smiling softly when he doesn’t tense up. He glances at him, and Brad smiles tiredly, lifts his good arm for Terry to curl up under, which really shouldn’t be the arrangement since Terry is a good head taller, but always has been. It’s a little squished, but not uncomfortable. Just warm, mostly. 

Terry can nearly always feel his own heartbeat, can sometimes see it moving under his shirt, murmuring away, and it unnerves him, but when he rests his head against Brad’s chest, the extra pulse is a comfort. Maybe it’s because it’s regular, steady, pumping in time like a heart should, audible without any swooshing or whooshing noises, but he thinks it’s mostly because it’s Brad’s.

“We probably shouldn’t stay here,” Terry says, sleepily, with absolutely no intention of moving. They’re not dangerously close to the cliffside, but they’re close enough that falling asleep wouldn’t be a good idea. He still can’t find it in him to actually move.

“Was the fire still going?” Brad asks, and Terry wonders how long Brad had been sitting away from the camp before he’d woken up.

“Yeah, a little. Mostly just smoking.”

Brad nods, rests his chin on the top of Terry’s head, and shifts his weight a little, as Terry feels his eyelids grow heavy. “We should probably wait until it’s out.”

It’s an excuse to stay like this a little longer, most likely. The smoldering twigs really wouldn’t be enough to set off Terry’s coughing again, and Brad hadn’t suggested moving away from the fire last night when it was roaring, but he likes having a reason to not break this moment, so he agrees.

Eventually, after a long while, Brad lies down, scootches a little bit away from the cliffside, gently pulling Terry along with him. The fire is definitely dead by now, but neither of them make any mention of returning to the campsite. They don’t speak at all. Terry finds his position again, hugging Brad around his stomach, head on his chest, ear pressed to his sternum and Brad, for his part, holds him as close as he possibly can with just one arm to hold with.

He listens, again, for Brad’s heartbeat, regular and strong, and marvels slightly at his even breathing, at the lack of any other noises coming from his body. It’s soothing, in a way Terry never thought breathing and heartbeats could be, and he finds himself switching between glancing up at the stars and up at Brad’s equally tired face until his drooping eyelids finally close.

They don’t wake up again until morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this in like 24 hours between animating my undergrad films and then published without proofreading so I'm sure this is rough.  
Anyway most of the medical stuff mentioned is from experience except Marfan and lupus, which I don't have, so if anyone has corrections, I'd be happy to hear them. I did some research but like I said, not an expert and I don't wanna misrepresent anything.  
Also I had no idea what to call this so w/e, the title works for what it is  
I guess if anyone has any questions about specific hospital shit I mentioned, feel free to ask, I might have assumed some medical shit was common knowledge that wasn't, I do that sometimes


End file.
